Amazon's robot world
Will Kiva's pallet pullers spare low-wage Pennsylvania labor - or the many stores it services who are rivals of new owner Amazon.com?
Amazon's robot world
Joseph N. DiStefano
Amazon.com's agreement to buy robot-maker Kiva Systems Inc. for $775 million yesterday raises questions about the job impact of Amazon's warehouse-building spree in central Pennsylvania, northern Delaware and other states. Pennsylvania - America's Warehouse - is one of the California-based online retail giant's employment centers, with five locations in Allentown-to-Carlisle corridor on the Interstate freeways that bypass I-95 and the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Amazon is also preparing a second, larger distribution center in northern Delaware, "Home of Tax-Free Shopping," as other states prepare to tax online purchases. Full-sized Amazon centers each hire a thousand or more mostly low-paid fulltime employees, plus a few thousand each in the Christmas shopping rush. Only California, Virginia and Tennessee have as many as Pennsylvania, according to Amazon's hiring board. It's not enough that Amazon is wiping out traditional retailers and even threatening industry giant Wal-Mart as smartphone shoppers move their buying online. Will Amazon use robots to replace sweaty, UPS-FedEx-Post Office-style grunt work, too? "Amazon already uses this technology at Diapers.com and Soap.com" in Newark, N.J., which Amazon bought in its purchase of Quidsi Inc. last year, notes Fiona Dias, chief strategy officer at ShopRunner, a division of Conshohocken-based Kynetic. Kynetic is the successor to Amazon rival GSI Commerce, which sold its order-fulfillment centers to eBay last year. There are limits, though, to what warehouse robots can do: "We looked at this. We found Kiva robots were good at racing out and getting a pallet. But they aren't good at sorting 500,000 (products) in all shapes and sizes," Dias told me. "They are a piece of the puzzle. They are not ready to take over warehouses." (Workers will still "pick, pack and stow" packages manually, Amazon vice president Dave Clark said in this brief statement.) So labor is safe, for now. But the Amazon-Kiva deal "will create some anxiety among Staples, Drugstore.com, Crate and Barrel, The Gap and all the other (Kiva) customers who compete with Amazon," Dias added. "Amazon will learn a lot" about rivals' top sellers, order speed and customer focus "from having a robotic Trojan horse in all these retailers' warehouses," she said. "There are a whole bunch of CEOs slamming their fists on the tables today, wondering, 'Why have we let these robots in?'"
Well, what we have here is the future, capital intensive and the need for more electricity but less need for labor. Simple political solution, 3 day work week, 8 hour day, same standard of living due to greater productivity. Advantage, less need for participation in money economy. Taxes do not have to sky rocket for social safety net as many people will spend time taking care of family members from cradle to grave, including more but not total homeschooling during the youngest years. Relief of tax burden due to less need for people to be running around like lunatics on the roads that are always late for work etc etc. Robots means it's time to renegotiate the social contract.
Nando, that sounds great, if only people knew what to do with their free time. You think they'd spend it with music, nature, writing, gardening? Or drugs, gambling, etc.?— Joe D
